


curiosity killed the cat

by thebeespatella



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Attempted Sexual Assault, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Crime Scenes, Dubious Ethics, Extremely Dubious Consent, Hannibal is Hannibal, Inspired by Law & Order (TV), M/M, Medical Kink, Medical Procedures
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-11 00:28:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12311049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebeespatella/pseuds/thebeespatella
Summary: Her eyes are immediately drawn to the chalk outline where Graham must have lain, curled up on the freezing asphalt, the shape of him clear against the dark blood on the pavement ... She kneels down and reaches a hand out, hovering over where his stomach might have been. “The cold probably saved your life,” she says to herself.--law and order procedural, plus ABO.based off thistumblr prompt.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [Required listening before you read this.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP3MuUTmXNk)

“What the hell took you so long?” Miriam Lass is standing on the curb, arms wrapped around herself for warmth. It’s too cold for her no-nonsense blazer and slacks, although because of the hour she doesn’t have her hair tied up. 

“Getting dressed,” Katz shoots back. “I got an extra jacket in the back if you want it.”

“Sure.” Katz tosses her the car keys, then turns back toward the crime scene, only to be stumble right into Jimmy Price. 

“I was hoping it wouldn’t be you,” he says.

“Bodies can’t be choosers, Price, let’s go.” 

“No, really,” Zeller cuts in. “Maybe—maybe your new partner can take a look first?”

“It’s been a year, she’s hardly new. Besides, what, you think my delicate omega stomach can’t handle it or something?” 

“No! No, it’s—” 

“It’s Will Graham.” Zeller gives Price a nasty look at the admission, but he ploughs on. “Homeless guy found them, took a while to flag a car down—”

Katz feels the undertow of her gut lurch. “What is it, overdose? Why’d you call homicide?”

“No, Graham’s on his way to the hospital. He was bleeding, I didn’t get a good look. But the alpha he was with…” Price steps aside.

Her eyes are immediately drawn to the chalk outline where Graham must have lain, curled up on the freezing asphalt, the shape of him clear against the dark blood on the pavement, random and saturated. It’s unclear who had bled where. She kneels down and reaches a hand out, hovering over where his stomach might have been. “The cold probably saved your life,” she says to herself. Then she turns to the body. 

“What’ve we got?” Lass walks around the body to stand at the head. 

“White alpha, mid-forties. Driver’s license says he’s Cordell Doemling, forty-three, lives in Fairfax. Must’ve come into the city to have some fun,” Price says.

“Yeah, smells like it,” Lass says. 

“All right, talk to me,” says Katz. “C.O.D.?”

“Too early to tell, but looks like exsanguination. Scalpel right to the femoral artery. Seems like he pulled it out himself.” Price indicates the glint of metal almost hidden under Doemling’s bloody thigh. 

“Technically, he killed himself,” Zeller says. 

“But here’s the thing.” Price leans down to turn Doemling’s face over. There’s a hole in the middle of his cheek, with the clear imprint of teeth. The wound is a soft shock to the senses, disconcerting for the absence of flesh. “We’re going to need Graham’s dental records.” 

“Where is it?”

“Where is what?”

“The rest of his face.” 

“We assumed Graham took it with him.”

Katz tilts her head. “Fly’s undone.”

“So, what happened—Doemling got fresh with Graham, and Graham bit his face off, stabbed him in the leg?”

“Don’t get excited, Zeller.” Lass crouches down next to Katz. “Test for fluids, bag the scalpel, check for blood types and prints.” 

“And look for that piece of face.” Katz looks behind her at the outline of Will’s body. “Graham was just—bruised?”

“From the looks of it, but there was a lot of blood. I didn’t see him.”

Katz stands, looks at the bloodstains again. It’s getting light, and the black shapes are being touched by the odd blue-gray of city mornings, morphing against the hardness of day. 

“And nobody saw anything,” Lass says. 

“Unis are out canvassing, but nothing so far. It was closing time. Anyone who saw anything is in a cab back home.”

“The real question is—what was Graham doing out here, by himself?” Katz says. 

“Why, because he’s an omega?”

“No, because he’s a goddamn recluse,” Katz snaps. “The whole time we worked together we got drinks together only once or twice. Always had to go home, feed his dogs.”

“A cop that doesn’t drink,” Lass says. 

“Maybe a cop that shouldn’t drink,” Katz says, nodding at the body. “I’m going to the hospital.”

\--

GEORGE WASHINGTON HOSPITAL  
900 23rd ST. NW  
MONDAY, OCTOBER 9

Once, Beverly had accidentally set too cheap a saucepan over too high a flame, fire lighting on the handle and Teflon scraping off the bottom. That burned plastic smell has the same sterility as hospitals. Something chemical and still about it. It doesn’t turn her stomach but it is oppressive and constant. She catches Lecter coming out of Graham’s room. “How is he?”

Lecter snaps off his gloves. “Detective Katz. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“It’s never really pleasure with me, Doctor. When can I talk to your patient?”

“When he’s awake. In the meantime, I see no need to guard him.” He nods at the officer posted outside Graham’s door. “His injuries are such that he could hardly leave on his own.”

“What’s the rundown?”

“We closed the wound in his shoulder up neatly. He should regain full mobility if he keeps up with physical therapy. But he crashed—internal bleeding. He required an exploratory laparotomy, I’m afraid.” Lecter sighs. “Quite a vicious beating, Detective. I hope you find the perpetrator.”

Katz blinks at him. “I’m investigating a homicide.” 

“Well, I reassure you, he’s quite alive. I made sure of it.” 

“Not him. I got an alpha D.O.A last night, and Graham was involved.”

Lecter stops for a moment, perfect stillness in the flurry of the hospital corridor. “An omega, a suspect for murder. Most unusual.”

“I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often,” Katz says. “Our visits aren’t that much better even now that I’ve left sex crimes, are they.” 

“A different sort of uncivilized,” Hannibal agrees. 

She checks her phone. “Let me know when he wakes up. I’ve got to get back to the station.” 

“Detective Katz—I must admit to a morbid curiosity.”

“Morbid, huh. Don’t get enough of that here?” She rolls her shoulders. The day has already made her tight and it’s barely begun. “Some homeless guy found them both in an alley. Graham was unconscious, stabbed the alpha in the leg.”

Hannibal says, “I seem to recall that he was your partner.”

“Yeah. Back when we were both in blues. But he—he got tangled up in this homicide business sooner than I did,” says Katz. “Did you find anything unusual in his stomach?”

“I didn’t check. Should I have?”

“Graham—he ripped a good chunk out of the stiff’s face with his teeth before they went down. We didn’t find it.”

“Regrettably, it may be gone by now.”

“Yeah. Thought it was worth a shot.”

“Seems that alpha bit off more than he could chew.” Lecter offers his version of a smile, a nearly arbitrary flit of muscle. 

Katz cocks an eyebrow at him. Lecter was a strange bird. Sometimes she got the feeling he was perched on a wire, watching all of them from above. “All right. Who’s on rotation? I’m going to need a rape kit when I get back.” 

“I will be attending to his follow-up care.”

“It was ugly,” Katz says. “You look dead on your feet, Lecter. Go home.” 

“No,” he says. “I feel quite alive.”


	2. Chapter 2

Lass drops a file on Katz’s desk. “Vic has no known friends, no family. No emergency contact, even. Was kicked out of hospital residency in Pennsylvania for an unspecified reason.”

“Any open cases around that time? Suits against the hospital?” 

“I’ll take a look. But I got into his financials,” Lass says. “Something’s off. Six months ago he cashed his first check for ten thousand dollars, and every month since.” 

“Who’s paying a dropout that kind of money?” 

“Tamworth Limited, apparently. There’s no—”

“Katz,” Crawford bellows across the pen. “My office.”

“I’ll be back,” she says, and keeps her head down as she walks across the room. “Lieu, listen. We just got called in, I didn’t know—”

“I want you on this case,” Crawford says. 

“Oh.” Katz lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding, leans in the doorway. “I thought you were going to chew me out. Some conflict-of-interest paperwork bull.” 

The regular tense grimace, a memory of disapproval, makes its way across his mouth. “No. Your personal connection to Graham will give you insight.”

“We both have a personal connection,” she points out. “You’re his rabbi.”

“Well, it’s different for you. And, I _was_ his rabbi,” Crawford says. “Will Graham doesn’t have a religion. Not anymore.”

She frowns. “I think it was self-defense, Jack. It’s a homicide but not a murder.”

He sits back in his chair. “Stay on it. DA’s office and 1PP are coming down hard. I’ve already fielded three calls from Lounds. Something about Will being unstable or other.” 

“Nothing like a good death to chum the waters,” Katz agrees.

“Close the door on your way out.” 

Katz takes a moment before she walks back to her desk. The sky is turning windowpanes blank with gray. A clean slate. 

“It’s gonna rain,” Lass says, when she sits down.

“Why were they together?” Katz asks, rifling through a stray file. Just to keep her hands busy for the next moment. “The checks. Graham is an investigator with the D.A’s office, as part of his...after the Hobbs case. Starting over. He had to have a reason to be with Doemling.”

Lass lifts a shoulder and an eyebrow. “I mean, they’re both unmated. It’s a long weekend, it was near a bar…” 

“No, no.” Katz sighs explosively, like it’ll help. Only an alpha would make that kind of assumption, and she’s tired of constantly course-correcting. “No omega would willingly go into some random alleyway, with a strange alpha, not without telling someone—”

“Did Graham have anybody to tell?”

“I would’ve picked up,” Katz says. “He could have told me.”

“Hey.” Lass reaches across their desks to touch Katz with her warm hand. “Don’t feel guilty. It’s okay. You couldn’t have known.”

It grates, the assumption that she might be fragile, too emotional, too involved. Always too much and not enough. Jack, too, with his _it’s different_ bullshit. She feels a sudden rush of affection for Graham, for his surliness, for his defiance. “I know. It’s not my job to have known. It’s my job to know now.” She takes her hand back. “Look up lawsuits with Doemling’s hospital. I’ll check out the corporation that signed his checks.”

Katz can feel Lass looking at her as she hunkers down in front of her monitor. Let her look. 

Tamworth Limited turns out to be a shell corporation housed within a shell within another shell. The ownership goes through one empty identity to another. Names without records, foreign nationals. “Cayman Islands,” she says, when Lass puts a take-out container on her desk.

“It’s a Reuben,” Lass says. “From down the street.” If it isn’t an apology, it’s at least an acknowledgment. But Katz forgets about it until her eyes sting from looking at the screen too long. 

It’s evening—she’s shoveled down the sandwich after it got cold, corned beef gone rubbery under her teeth—when she gets the call. “Detective Katz,” Lecter says. “He’s awake.”

\--

Lecter is in the hospital room when Katz peeks in. “Has he been in there the whole time?”

“I don’t know, we just got on shift,” says the officer at the door. 

“All right. Thanks, Harris. Keep an eye on it.” She pushes the door open. “Will.” 

He’s got a bad bruise on the side of his face, his left shoulder is bound in a sling. With the way he doesn’t move, it’s clear he’s in pain. Lecter is fiddling with the IV. “Detective Katz, you may want to keep this brief, he—”

“I’m fine,” Graham snaps. 

Katz looks from one to the other. “Uh, thank you, Dr. Lecter. I think we can take it from here.”

He leaves the room with a rather haughty flourish of his lab coat.

“So,” Beverly says. “Been taking good care of you, huh.”

Graham snorts. “Wouldn’t leave.”

“So, can you tell us what you were doing last night?” Lass says, taking out her notebook and pen. 

Katz watches Graham observe her, mouth tight, the way he takes in her movement, her suit, her boots, her hair. All of her face but her eyes. “What I was doing.”

“What she means is—just tell us what happened last night. Whatever you can remember.”

Graham settles back against the flat pillows, looks at the ceiling and takes as deep a breath as his new stitches will allow. His heart-rate doesn’t spike, an even interval of beeps in the quiet room. “He knew me,” he says finally. 

“How did he approach you?”

“I was supposed to meet a source there,” he says. “At the bar. I thought he was just hitting on me. My source was late, and I waited.”

“A source for what?” Lass asks. 

“About the Verger investigation. I’ve been on it two months. We got an anonymous tip about child abuse at one of the summer camps they run. I’ve been trying to pin down the informant. He said he wanted to talk.” Graham closes his eyes. It takes some time for him to open them again. 

“You think Dr. Lecter will have my head if I open the drip?” 

“He’ll take more than your head,” Will says, with a semblance of a smile’s grace. “The alpha told me his name. Dunning. Something like that. I moved to get away from him, and he stuck me with a needle. Some paralytic agent.”

“They run a tox screen?”

“Came up clean. Probably GHB. He hauled me out of the bar. I’m sure I just looked drunk. Then he took out the scalpel, put it to my face. It’s—blurry. I was disoriented, lost in time and space. But he—it wasn’t part of the brief.” 

Another lingering silence. He's getting woozy from the morphine, but he's always been arrythmic, all long pauses and abrupt epiphany. Katz knows to let the moment breathe, but she can feel Lass itching to speak behind her. 

“You weren’t supposed to be so pretty,” Will says. “But I’m sure they won’t mind waiting.”

“Is that something he said? Who’s _they_?” Lass pushes. 

Graham looks at her, the downturn of her mouth. “He wasn’t supposed to try to—it was supposed to be neat. Not clean, but quiet. You weren’t supposed to find me. There was a limo—it stopped for a time.” 

“Plate numbers?” Lass says. 

The drugs are kicking in. His pupils are constricting and his mouth is going slack. 

“Will.” Katz kneels next to the bed. “Did you consent to a rape kit?”

“Yes,” he mumbles. “Dr. Lecter—did it himself.” 

“ _What_ —”

“I’m going to feed on you first,” Will says, and then he’s out.

\--

“You go ahead.”

“Katz…” Lass hovers. 

“Bring the car around.” 

Katz accosts Lecter by the nurses’ station and steers him to a corner by the arm. “ _You_ performed the rape kit?” she hisses. 

He blinks at her. “He refused it. He indicated there was no need.” 

“You didn’t touch him? Because I’m gonna let you know right now, if you—”

“Detective. Do you really think my...behavior...indicates I wish him harm?” He looks briefly at the floor. 

There’s something about the way his face stays careful that makes her push. “Maybe you just got greedy.” 

“Are you accusing me of misconduct?” 

“Should I be?” She waits, arms crossed. “Dr. Lecter.”

“I am glad that he has people who care for him,” he says, meeting her eyes. “But he did not give his consent, and I would have sent an omega nurse regardless. As per protocol. I, too, am interested in his well-being.”

“And what’s the nature of your interest, Doctor? Just while we’re on the subject.” 

“Will Graham is unique,” he says. 

Katz leans in, really looks at him. He’s an older alpha, steady hands and a steady build. A surgeon’s life is a lonely one; odd hours, empty rooms, blood and guts. In many ways it’s like a cop’s life, just at the other end of the body. And he’s waiting, patiently, as she assesses him. Her face breaks into a smile that surprises them both. “Oh, boy,” she says. “You got it bad.”

“I—”

“A friendly word of advice? Take it slow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Rabbi" is a term used by police to indicate a mentor within the force; not a literal term in this context.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, folks, there comes a time in every A/B/O writer’s career where they type the words “lubricating the speculum.” Be warned that there is some dubcon medical stuff here, somewhat explicit. 
> 
> Recommended listening: [Lascia chi'o pianga](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wE06bBMl9c) in case you're interested in the vibe Hanni is going for here.

HOME OF HANNIBAL LECTER  
38 KALORAMA CIRCLE NW  
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12

The neighborhood is quiet when he pulls into the garage. The smell of wet fallen leaves fills the air, accumulated in drains and the edge of the curb, on the fringe of putrid. The sky had finally made good on its threat to rain earlier in the afternoon. He leaves the garage door open for a moment and sucks in a deep inhale. Breathing in deeply is one of the easiest ways to get close to the full experience of living, even if it is damp pavement and molding dead things. And isn’t it good to live.

It has been two days since he met Will Graham. 

Hannibal turns to walk up the stairs into the house. Some things still chafe about living in America: he’s never encountered an attractive garage staircase. He feels a vague ache in his knees and his shoulders; resents the slow-bone exhaustion that lingers at the edges of his consciousness as he puts his groceries away. There was a time when he could pull a double-shift and give no quarter to his body’s demands, but those days are in twilight. 

The smell of the hospital invades his kitchen. He had changed out of his scrubs, of course, but still—the sharp smell of disinfectant. Death has appeal in its own right, but there’s generally very little merit to mixing his work and his art. There had been two deaths in the OR last night, and they had been beyond his influence. The reminder rankles. 

Most people who come across his table are barely more than a collection of wounds. Gunshot wounds, compound fractures, lacerations. It had been much the same at first, the open hole in his shoulder and the mottled flesh of his body, blood pooling in places it shouldn’t. And so Hannibal had cut him open, a long drag through his abdomen, to burn him closed. 

But then. Then, Detective Katz had done him the courtesy of sharing Will’s involvement with a death. He hadn’t had time to be curious about the blood around Will’s mouth before surgery. Hannibal had suspected—defensive wounds on his arms, blood under his fingernails—that there was more to the omega than he could immediately see. But for his findings to be so lavish; so generous; so filled with promise?

Will’s body had been covered in blood, sticky against his skin and matted in his hair. Across his face, a Rorschach blot which he read like tea leaves. It would have glowed rich under the scattered amber streetlights, blacker still under moonlight.

The universe had bestowed upon him a gift. And not in the way some construed gifts from God; speaking of arbitrary blessings and empty gratitude. The universe was not nearly so capricious—how could she be, after giving him Will? No, he had seen the cracks in her design, had heard her whisper: after all you have lost, this—this is my tax. Your price repaid. He had leaned into the oft-sharp kiss of fate and been rewarded. 

It’s hard to restrain your dreams, especially when they bloom redolent before you. Open and ripe, like the open, seed-ridden flesh of a fresh fig. The future gazes softly on him now. It could have simply been a brutal retaliation—Will had found himself forced into the alley at scalpel-point; the indignity of violation so intolerable to him that he lashed out in desperation. But Hannibal allows himself to believe that it’s in his nature—that Will lives with his teeth bared, ready to snap down on flesh. Remade with the memory of violence. Even now, at the image—the idea—his access to words goes pleasantly static. 

So, of course, he’d had to check. He’d had to know after encountering the keen sweetness of Will’s potential. The stigma surrounding rape might have stopped Will from reporting, cut the story short, and Hannibal needed to know. How else would he know when and how to push, to tip Will into his own orbit of influence? So he’d slipped Will an extra sedative and ensured he was good and hazy before putting his legs into the stirrups and lubricating the speculum. Hannibal had been glad to see that he opened easily, accepting Hannibal’s gloved fingers then the bills of the speculum. He hadn’t been able to resist notching it a hair wider than strictly necessary. And Will’s insides—unharmed, soft and pink inside, slick gathering to well on the gleaming metal, like an idle tear. He had then been unable to resist gathering it on a latex-tipped finger, to bring it to the tip of his tongue. Oh, but that he could write a lament for the taint of plastic! That the first memory of taste had to be so marred. It was enough to want to turn in his lab coat. Never before had the confines of his work seemed so desperately limited, the narrowness of the facade he wore, usually effortless, suddenly pinching. He was restless and another sounder would not be enough. It would be a time of despondency were it not full of hope. 

How Hannibal will delight in every part of him! Pleasant, intrusive remembrances floated through his mind like thick clouds on a brisk wind—each memory a postcard; Will's teeth, his nails, his feet. The memory palace felt inadequate to capture the whole of him, like marble wallpaper over plaster. All of the detail with none of the reality. Snapshots of the real experience of walking through a place, and how well he would mark every part. 

Hannibal thinks of the clean even stitches in Will’s arm and stomach. Though there is much to recommend it as a simple image, the real attraction will be, is, and was four-dimensional. The open gap of the wound, the rhythm of his fingers on it, the slow unspooling when he takes them out. From dark blood to pink scar til it fades as much as possible. Will does not strike him as the type to be self-conscious about scars—he will not bother with ointments or creams to soften it. It will stand out as stark and separate and part of him. He will carry the scars of their meeting like a healed-over souvenir and he is the more beautiful for it. 

There is something wild in Will Graham, and he's going to make it his own. 


End file.
